BARCELONA, Spain--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--The Car
Connectivity Consortium (CCC), an organization focused on enabling
seamless mobile device-to-vehicle connectivity, today announced the
completion of Phase One of the Digital
Key specification, documenting the state-of-the-art of commercially
available Digital Key solutions. Digital Key represents an industry
milestone for an interoperable solution that enables smart devices like
smart phones and smart watches to act as a digital key for any vehicle,
allowing drivers to lock, unlock, start the engine and share access to
the car. The Phase One specification is undergoing final member review
and will be made available to all CCC members in Q2’2018. In ongoing
work, Digital Key will be optimized to enable even more vehicle and
smart phone companies, building the basis for a Digital Key ecosystem
which will scale over the whole industry.

“The addition of Digital Key to CCC’s technology portfolio fulfills our
promise to enable connected in-vehicle solutions that put drivers first
by delivering new capabilities and creates exciting new business models
for companies that manage numerous vehicles”

Highlights

To date, there are a few proprietary solutions available for using a
smart device as a digital car key. However, by constraining the
digital key to only work between specific smart phones and cars, the
use cases are limited.

By delivering an interoperable solution, CCC is enabling a richer
ecosystem that supports transfer of the Digital Key amongst devices
and drivers and enables new use cases for fleet management, car rental
and car sharing companies. For these future use cases, Digital Key
expands privacy and flexibility, allows for secure key transfer, and
streamlines vehicle and fleet management.

“The addition of Digital Key to CCC’s technology portfolio fulfills our
promise to enable connected in-vehicle solutions that put drivers first
by delivering new capabilities and creates exciting new business models
for companies that manage numerous vehicles,” said Mahfuzur Rahman,
President, CCC. “Our members have already identified a number of ways
that they believe this technology will be used – for example for car
sharing and rental cars, the car key can be easily transferred in
advance to the driver through their Smart Phone. I’m excited to see the
additional use cases the industry will deliver in the near future now
that this interoperable technology will be readily available.”

The CCC is dedicated to cross-industry collaboration in developing
global standards and solutions for smartphone and in-vehicle
connectivity. The organization’s 75 plus members represent more than 70
percent of the world’s auto market, more than 60 percent of the global
smartphone market and a who’s who of aftermarket consumer electronics
vendors. Besides MirrorLink®, the CCC portfolio of technologies includes
Digital Key and Car Data. For further information about CCC projects and
to get involved, please visit www.carconnectivity.org.